Beth Simmons collapsed within the bubble of blue flame right as the fire turned to steam, disappearing.
Right before Walt’s minions disappeared to return to his gauntlet, a few managed to squeeze out some goodbyes.
“And another one bites the dust, boyo,” the Grave Grunt said, tipping his baker boy cap. “Till next time.”
“The next time you summon me,” the Deadwood Witch said, winking at him, “it should be over a cup of Silverleaf tea and a plate of pumpkin shortbread cookies.”
The Seven-Fingered Ghoul held up his flask. “To my new master.” Then he took a swig. “Next time, we’ll get you another win so you can officially make Duelist!”
The zombie moaned at him, the Skeletal Hulkbeast’s two ogre heads grunted at him in acknowledgement and the Flesh Golem merely drooled and blinked at him.
And then they were gone, returning to his card gauntlet.
The device hummed on his arm.
----------------------------------------
[Congratulations!]
[Second Slaystone Duel Victory Achievement Unlocked!]
[Defeated Top 500 Slaynami Duelist Achievement Unlocked!]
[Defeated A Hero Of The Leviathan Achievement Unlocked!]
[Made Psycho Slinger Commit Suicide Unlocked!]
[Defeated First Hellpriest Achievement Unlocked!]
[Survive Chronobite Achievement Unlocked!]
[Felt Both Pain And Pleasure At The Chains Of Harrow Achievement Unlocked!]
[You Survived The Chronobite Achievement Unlocked!]
[Fast Forward Duel Achievement Unlocked!]
[Avoided Getting Slapped By Your Own Paranoid Minion Unlocked!]
[Took A Charnel Bolt To The Chest Unlocked!]
----------------------------------------
Walt shook his head. He wondered if the achievements had any kind of significance other than bragging rights and profile decoration. And what was with the playful tone? Apparently, experiencing traumatic and fucked-up events was pure entertainment for the game’s organizers and audience.
----------------------------------------
[You have been rewarded Psycho Points!]
[You have won opponent’s Card Deck!]
----------------------------------------
Trial: Walter Frank Harmon
Wins to Duelist: 2/3
Psycho Points: 4
Psycho Points to Qualify for Next Phase: 4/12
Record: 2-0-0
Walt’s injuries and pain melted away. He noticed that the wound on his chest from the Chains of Harrow had healed. His shirt was still torn. He rubbed the flesh underneath. It was as good as new and there no traces of lingering discomfort.
The glow of the blinking Hellpriest’s gauntlet spinning over her corpse caught his attention.
He walked over to her remains. The Soultap had caved in her entire chest. Like the core of her being had been sucked out of her, leaving a collapsed hollow in her torso. Her veins were blackened under her parchment-like skin. And a milky glaze covered her open, unblinking eyes.
Walt felt relief that the duel was over, and he felt satisfaction that he had come out the victor. He felt no remorse for the strange, cruel girl. If anything, he wished that those who had fallen to her cruelty could feel some sense of justice that she had been stopped.
There was a grim poetry to a golem made out of the people she had murdered getting their revenge. Not that they would know it, but Walt hoped their souls could rest peacefully somehow. That in the end, they were able to confront and help punish their murderer. All by harnessing this strange and grotesque and powerful tech the Slaynami Corporation had brought to their world.
A panel opened on the Hellpriest’s disembodied gauntlet. The glowing rectangle emerged from the opening.
Slaynami Gauntlet link established to fallen opponent’s gauntlet…
Accept connection Y/N?
Walt accepted the connection. The Hellpriest’s gauntlet glowed a cold blue. His own gauntlet began to swirl with the same color, signifying the link.
The glowing deck arced towards his gauntlet.
Claim Beth Simmon’s deck of cards Y/N?
“She has some Legendaries,” Walt said. “Of course I’m claiming the deck.”
A panel opened on his gauntlet and his new deck flew into the device. The panel closed and his gauntlet returned to its normal purple Voidlock imbue. Words blinked across the display.
Examine new cards?
“In a minute,” Walt said. “I need a moment to sit down.”
He was parched and weary from the duel. Though his wounds were healed, his body was still physically tired from the effort and the release of adrenaline. And his mind was mush from the experience.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Battleboard Barrier Closing…
The Blue Barrier Matrix surrounding the campus and its buildings powered down, disappearing.
No longer a Battleboard Zone…
He found a soft drink vending machine back on the quad. It was a dollar for a drink. He looked around the destroyed quad that was littered with bodies. He didn’t know the rules about summoning a card minion outside of a duel, but suspected it was possible since, according to the newscasts and videos, he had seen Psycho Slingers using them to attack the populace.
He could easily summon the Grave Grunt or Hulkbeast out to rip the panel off the soda machine. But he still found himself pulling out his credit card and scanning it under the card reader to purchase a bottle of water and a Coke Zero. Perhaps it was because he needed to hold onto some sense of normalcy, doing something mundane as paying a vending machine.
He’d experiment with the card gauntlet later. He wanted to look at his new deck and then get connected to the WiFi.
He went back into the library and climbed back up to the second floor. He noticed the Chronico Cam Drones were still following him. Was Beth’s stream still broadcasting?
He went back over to her body and saw the Slaynami Chronico was still near her head, flashing with an RBG glow. On the holographic screen, he could see that her stream was still indeed live.
He sighed.
He crouched and put his finger on the sensor panel to shut it down. “Show’s over.”
He turned off her stream.
The Chronico Drones returned to their docks on the main device, powering down.
#
Walt found a desk in a cubby, deep in the stacks, barricaded away behind rows of shelves. He guzzled down the bottle of water and was now sipping on the Coke Zero.
His attention was on his gauntlet. “Examine cards.”
The Hellpriest’s deck list appeared. Well, now his new deck he had assimilated into his card collection.
Beth Simmon’s Deck
Hellpriest
22 Cards
Hell Speech: Wither
Chains of Harrow
Cenobite Chaplain (2)
Hellwell (2)
Hell Speech: Perish
Intrusion
Chains of Agony
Hellfire Cultist (2)
Levitical Hellfiend
Leviathan Spawn
Paranoia
Leviathan’s Kiss
Unholy Tongue Lash
The Priest of the Blazing Shield
Cleric of Leviathan
Cenobite Chimera
Crucible Configuration
Chronobite
Leviathan’s Scales
He was curious to see if there was anything she could have done to win. One card name popped out at him.
Crucible Configuration. Object. Set: Leviathan’s Lair. Rarity: Legendary. An esoteric puzzle box and torture device that traps its target within, feeding on the victim’s torment.
Drains Enemy Hero of 30 Health Points and transfers it to your Health Pool.
Cost: 8 Vigor Stones
Had this card had been her win condition? It was a powerful card, for sure. But with no board control and no other way to burst him down, it wouldn’t have saved her. At least he didn’t see it be her saving grace. Maybe if he hadn’t board cleared her and put pressure on her own Health Pool.
He could see how it would have fucked him if he Soultapped himself within range of lethal. He made a mental note that he should try and find a card that could counter such life-draining objects.
He kept looking through the cards.
Unholy Tongue Lash. Spell. Set: Leviathan’s Lair. Rarity: Common. Admonish your opponent with a punishing and pleasuring lash of the tongue.
Deal 12 points of damage to Enemy Hero. Heal self for 12 Health Points.
Cost: 5 Vigor Stones.
Okay, so this made more sense now. She did have some burst in her deck. If she had combined this with the Crucible Configuration, that’s a hefty 42 points of damage. Either she hadn’t drawn into the cards, or she had misplayed.
And misplaying was a possibility because her emotions seemed pretty frazzled by the end of their duel. Still, Walt had saved himself with board control and his minions would have beat her down, regardless of draining him of life and healing herself.
But it certainly would have been closer there at the end. She just didn’t have the removal. And it looked like she had went minion heavy instead of removal heavy.
Hell Speech: Wither. Spell. Set: Leviathan’s Lair. Rarity: Common. A powerful word of the Leviathan’s native language. When spoken, make a weak minion bow in reverence and wither.
Destroy an enemy minion with 6 attack or below.
Cost: 1 Vigor Stone
This was early board removal.
Cenobite Chaplain. Minion. Set: Leviathan’s Lair. Rarity: Common. Chaplains ordained by Leviathan and in the Order of the Slash.
War Whoop: Give a friendly minion +5 Health Points
Rod of Punishment: 4 Attack, Cooldown: 5 seconds
Health Points: 3
Cost: 2 Vigor Stones
The Cenobite Chaplains and Hellfire Cultists seemed to be solid minions for early board control. And the Leviathan Spawn was a beefy minion for early and mid-game. They were nothing exceptional, just Hellpriest troopers to apply pressure and gain some tempo early on and into mid-game.
During the duel, one of his minions had mentioned something about the Dark Caster usually forming alliances? Was that also why he could use their cards? That Voidlocks, Necromancers and Hellpriests were considered Dark Casters and thus their set or class cards could be used interchangeably?
He figured perhaps that was the case, that if he was say, a Silentblade or Thaumuturgist, that he wouldn’t be able to use Beth’s Leviathan’s Lair cards. And there were probably sets that were neutral that any class could use.
Which would mean that, amongst allied classes, there was probably a flourishing card trade. Until the alliances fell apart. Which seemed the inevitable fate in a tournament like this. Unless the alliances were formed to survive until the later phase where maybe survival rights became a thing.
Walt had a lot of questions. He wished he could get a hold of more information on classes and deck sets so that he knew the rules for sure. There was so much more he wanted to learn about the game.
He added the deck to his collection and rubbed his face. Outside, it was magic hour, heralding in the arrival of dusk. The setting sun simmered in the haze of murky crimson shadows leftover from the eclipse.
He still needed to find the damn WiFi password.
#
Walt huddled in the quad, searching through the debris of personal belongings scattered across the ground. It was all stuff from the corpses. Pocket and bookbag and purse contents that had been spread across the ground when the Flesh Golem had formed, its birth tearing apart the clothes of the corpses.
There were keys, lipstick and makeup, gum and breath mints amongst the debris. Torn books and a few chipped and cracked smart phones. Walt discovered, as expected, that most of the phones were password protected.
Except one.
It was a pink iPhone in a mangled Otterbox case. When he touched it, there was no password protection or face identification. It belonged to a girl named Molly Dotham and apparently she didn’t bother to activate any of these features. She apparently didn’t care about others rooting through her phone.
He went to settings and found the Georgia State Campus WiFi password.
“Finally,” Walt said.
He entered the password into his own phone and waited for the connection to establish. It did.
Near frantic, he impatiently saw that his messages were updating as he was connected to the Internet. While those loaded, he checked his email. It refreshed and his heart almost leapt out of his chest.
There was an email from Janice, his sister.
To: [email protected]
from: [email protected]
Subject: Please Respond!
Mom and I are okay. Nashville is not. Stay out of the city. I’m sure Atlanta is the same way. Hopefully you’ve gotten out.
We are headed to Grandpa’s cabin near Crossville. You know the place.
Meet us there.
Call if you can. Respond so we know you are alive.
Mom and I love you.
-Janice
P.S. Keep your head down and don’t do anything stupid.
Walt smiled. Even when it was the end of the world, his sister still felt the need to parent him.